The way that I've worn down
by WaltzMatildah
Summary: Izzie returns, even after Alex asks her not to. An examination of the changes that take place during Izzie's first year back. “I'm not the same as I was and neither are you...”


**Prompt:** _"Can you see the see the change in me? The way that I've worn down from all of the shifting." _(from the song "Fast" by Daisy May).

**Disclaimer:** All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

**The way that I've worn down...**

by Waltzmatildah

-

_She breathes in. Looks at her toes, forces her head up, smiles. _

_Tries to feel it. Her reflection never lies._

"_We never stood a chance, know you?"_

_She cocks her head a little to the left, feels her blonde curls brush her bare shoulder as she runs one finger down the mirror, smudging her chin, smearing one blue eye._

"_I'm not the same as I was and neither are you..."_

**Day One**

She eats lunch with April. A salad.

It's limp; cafeteria quality disgusting. She hopes no lettuce gets stuck in her teeth, because she's not entirely convinced April is the kind of person that would feel comfortable pointing it out.

She makes a mental note to head to the bathroom to check for herself once lunch is over.

Derek smiles at her warmly, says _welcome back_ in a tone that hides only a small amount of residual pity; it's a victory that she'll take.

Her patient, an elderly lady with a blue rinse and impossibly endless tales to tell, fills her with the kind of hope that is almost painful.

She never used to think about being _old_. About having grey hair and wrinkled hands and watery eyes, the colour of the summer sky.

She thinks about it a lot now.

**Day Eighteen**

Mark Sloan hits on her. He doesn't mean it and they both know it, but they play with the words anyway.

Try to remember what it was like.

A baby dies. Somewhere else in the hospital a convicted felon gets a donated kidney and lives to tell the tale. The irony makes her head spin and her feet falter.

_Good people get hit by buses..._

She's formed an alliance. It's tentative and uneasy, built on shaky common ground.

"So... you got fired too, huh?"

April nods, thick hair covering her face, eyes wide, unblinking.

"And now we're both back." She tries for bright, bubbly... _Izzie_. Succeeds for the most part.

She not naïve enough to discount the fact that April didn't know her back then. Back when bright and bubbly were second nature, blinding white light.

**Day Forty Two**

They're on a case together, her and Alex. A big one. Their first since... before.

She's prepared for it. Gets up early, straightens her hair carefully. Applies an extra layer of thick, black mascara.

Waterproof, not that it will matter.

She's right, it doesn't.

The patient lives. Alex cracks at precisely 3.17pm.

"I thought I asked you not to come back." A statement, not a question.

She shrugs casually, looks him in the eye.

"I didn't."

**Day Seventy Seven**

She meets with her oncologist. She's pretty sure Cristina knows, but only because Cristina knows _everything_, not because she actually speaks to her.

The scans are fine. The blood work is fine. Everything is fine.

The weather is most definitely not. It pounds translucent sheets of water into the pavement, drenches her through in three seconds flat when she dances in the rain to celebrate. Kicking up her heels and darting through puddles like she's five again.

People watch. Stare.

She lets them. Grins at them wide and bedazzled until they're sure she's gone off her rocker.

She always get the last laugh these days.

April brings her an umbrella and asks, confused, "is everything okay?"

"Everything is just _fine_," she giggles. Rain drips from her nose and splashes at her feet.

**Day One Hundred and Three**

It's a day off.

She plays music so loud that her coffee table hums. Sings along, deliberately incorrect lyrics and all, at the top of her voice until a neighbour knocks, concerned perhaps about the possibility of tortured felines.

She never was in the choir.

She turns the stereo up but stops singing. A ceasefire of sorts.

She eats cereal for lunch because no one is there to feed her a banana. It's sugary, chocolatey. Delicious.

After, she buys peonies and snap dragons and azaleas, arranges them haphazardly and goes to see George.

She lays on her back, rare sunshine warming her nose as she runs her fingers loosely through the somewhat overgrown grass.

"You'll never guess what..." she starts. It's how she always starts.

She's no longer surprised when George never guesses correctly.

**Day One Hundred and Thirty Eight**

Meredith invites her to a house-warming. It's cold, the way she says it. Eyes like ice.

She accepts, figures she has three days to come up with a plausible excuse to change her mind, wonders if _I have cancer_ still cuts it as a good enough reason.

She helps Doctor Bailey remove a gall bladder laproscopically and through the patient's navel. There won't even be a scar. No evidence of their work will be left behind.

She feels nothing.

In the afternoon she helps Mark Sloan, who doesn't hit on her once this time, to insert a pair of silicone breasts. The change in the woman is startling.

Overwhelming.

She grins, slow and wide, and nods her approval.

"Very, very hot!"

She calls her mother that night, _I'll be down to see you soon, mom_.

It's a lie, but in the scheme of travesties and deceptions that have made up her life, it's only a small one.

**Day One Hundred and Sixty Two and One Hundred and Sixty Three**

Alex sits beside her at Joe's. There are three empty stool widths of space separating them. It's as close as he's been _by choice_ for countless, nameless months.

She's sipping a complimentary diet coke. Joe has served it to her in a champagne glass, a lemon wedge snaked artistically around it's rim. Their own private 'cancer patient' lament.

He winks at her, grins, cocks his chin a little to the left, discreet. She nods back her acknowldgement, tries not to turn her head in Alex's direction.

Fails. Pretty much immediately actually.

Self restraint never was her strong point.

The liquor bottle shaped clock on the far wall glides monotonously towards midnight. She stands and leaves when the big hand meets the little hand at the twelve.

Like Cinderella.

She feels Alex's eyes on her as she reaches the door, turns around before she can tell herself not to.

His gaze is fixed firmly on the swirl of amber liquid in his glass.

Really, she expected nothing less.

**Day Two Hundred**

It's Christmas Day.

She only knows this because the nurses bring pumpkin pies and wear silly hats with bells attached to points. There is tinsel in the residents lounge but only because someone forgot to take it down last year.

Or maybe the year before that.

She eats a turkey sandwich for lunch. Her only concession to the occasion.

There is a white envelope pressed into the folds of her sweater, tucked neatly in the corner of her locker. She reaches for it with sweaty palms, stops, wipes them on her scrubs before starting again.

She refuses to be anything like they're all expecting her to be.

There are penguins on the front. Non traditional, she likes that. They're standing on a wave of snow. Crystalline flakes dot a bright blue sky.

_Merry Christmas, Izzie!_

_Thank you so much for everything this year._

_xx April_

Oh.

**Day Two Hundred and Twenty Seven**

Snow covers the toes of her winter boots. The streets are slippery. The hallways are filled with ice induced havoc. She sits outside, rugged up and warm enough. Breathes icy air into warm lungs, puffs clouds of white back out again.

Meredith and Cristina pass her without breaking stride. Lexie gives a little wave, torn between a code that dictates she must side with her sister and the fact that she was raised to be polite to everyone.

She's not entirely sure why there even has to _be _sides.

But they exist nonetheless, she takes her place on the wrong side of the line and defends it staunchly, as if her life depends on it.

And maybe it does.

She reaches a hand out to catch a flake of snow, soft like ash, on her gloved fingertip.

**Day Two Hundred and Fifty Three**

A multi-car pile up on the interstate closes their emergency department at four in the afternoon.

Doctor Hunt pulls her aside, looks at her, doesn't speak. The implied _are you ready for this_ is understood nonetheless and she nods back emphatically as he points her in the direction of the still swinging doors.

There is something about trauma surgery that suits her these days. It's detached, frantic, messy, leaves you no time to think about anything else. She surprises Hunt with her efficiency and instinct.

She surprises herself as well.

He thanks her at three in the morning when the ER reopens and the manic buzzing simpers to a low hum.

**Day Two Hundred and Eighty Nine**

She sits at Joe's with April, diet coke in a martini glass this time, cherry garnish and all. April is fast on her way to _drunk_ but, for a nice change, she's a funny drunk, quite entertaining actually.

Completely different from the morose tequila hazed...

Completely different from before.

She laughs until her cheeks ache, until her front teeth are dry and sticking to her top lip. She pulls her friend from her stool and they dance around clumsily, dichotomies of one another.

She already knows that April is going to regret this in the morning and she only feels a tinge of guilt as she assures Joe she'll take her home and convinces him to serve them up another round.

"Vodka soda, thanks! Vodka in one glass, soda in the other!"

It's their standing line.

He pretends he's going to say no for about three and a half seconds before rolling his eyes skyward and shrugging.

"You know you can't refuse me, Joe!"

**Day Three Hundred and Eleven**

Solo surgery day.

She's a little behind everyone else for more reasons than just the obvious but she couldn't care less. Doctor Bailey is in there with her, she reads a gossip magazine and grins widely the whole time, her eyes wide and bright.

After, she walks around in a daze, bumps into things, laughs at nothing. It's an unfamiliar feeling that is oh so achingly familiar.

Derek Shepherd gives her a pat on the shoulder, mildly condescending but appreciated nonetheless. April hugs her, tight, and Jackson bumps her fist, the male version of April's hug.

She's not sure when she and Jackson reached the stage where bumping fists seemed kind of normal, or at least, not as shocking as she was expecting it to be when she first saw his fingers curl and his arm raise.

She allows herself half a glass of champagne to celebrate. The bubbles fizz painfully up her nose and the taste is God awful. The cork disintegrates and pieces of it float lazily in her glass.

She doesn't care because it is still the sweetest taste of all.

**Day Three Hundred and Forty One**

She heads to the cemetery at seven am. It's not her day off and she doesn't call in sick and she's half convinced that no one will even notice.

Almost doesn't want them to.

She curls herself into a shell on top of where she's sure George's lungs are still pumping. Where she's sure his heart is still beating. Pounds her fist into the sodden soil and screams until her own lungs bleed.

She doesn't have to pretend out here because George knows the truth anyway.

In the past she'd have bought cupcakes, made brownies, baked muffins. Painstakingly decorated them with intricate precision. Today, today she comes empty handed.

"Happy birthday, George..."

She stays until her eyes burn, until her lids turn to sandpaper, until the cold seeps into her bones and makes her almost warm again.

**Day Three Hundred and Sixty Five**

"I understand now."

She turns, overbalances, rights herself with a palm flattened to the wall, finds herself face to face with Alex.

"Uh... you do?"

He nods, a jerky up down motion that completely betrays his nerves.

"When I said I told you not to come back and you told me that you didn't... I get it now... and you're right... you didn't."

"Oh."

"Did... ah, did I do this to you?"

She laughs and it's bitter even though she doesn't intend for it to be. Cancer did this to her. A bus driver that didn't stop did this to her. The Chief did this to her. _She _did this to her.

"Life, Alex. _Life_ did this to me, life did this to _us_."

"Okay." He nods again, the same disjointed motion.

There is a tension between them, something she can't quite fathom and she's sure there is more that he wants to say.

"Alex, are you okay?"

"You've been back a year, today... today it's been a year..."

"Really?" she asks, even though she knows, "Feels like it was only yesterday."


End file.
